


Love Series

by shopfront



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: Bisexual Aster Flores, College, F/F, Getting Together, Implied Past Relationships, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25783960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: Eighteen months later, Ellie gets a flyer. Someone has just shoved it into an envelope along with her usual letter from her father and one from Paul, and it's for a student art show. There's a small, handwritten note hidden away on a back corner.Nineteen months later, Ellie gets on a train.
Relationships: Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Comments: 19
Kudos: 158
Collections: Limited Theatrical Release 2020





	Love Series

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LamiaCalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LamiaCalls/gifts).



Ellie had tried to smooth out the invitation before holding it out to the door staff, but there was no hiding the creases. She’d been compulsively twisting it over and over in her hands for the whole walk from the station and now even she could barely read the names on it, despite every last detail on the page having been embossed on her brain for weeks already.

But the boy on the door looked young though - and bored, extremely bored. He just rolled his eyes and waved her through to enter without even looking at the invitation.

Taking a deep breath, Ellie pushed open the door and walked into the building.

Her eyebrows immediately went up as she walked straight into the back of a giggling group of young women, standing in front of a blown up naked photo of a man with an actual hot dog strategically glued tothe front of it. “Oh, brother,” Ellie muttered as she ducked her head and awkwardly tried to circle around them without making eye contact with anyone.

Not that it mattered when nobody knew her. Craning her head to try and find a familiar face in the crowd was pointless when she knew nobody and could barely see anything useful, even from on the tips of her toes. Sighing, Ellie resigned herself to working her way around the room the old fashioned way.

At least the next display was marginally better than the hotdog, though. Tilting her head, Ellie squinted at the photo series for a moment before removing her glasses and cleaning them on her shirt. Slipping them back over her ears, she sighed again. Definitely marginal. The photos really were blurry, and probably deliberately so judging from the pretentious names written on the plaques below them.

The works did continue to improve slowly as she moved around the edges of the room though. Wondering whether that was deliberate, to try and keep people from only looking at the art by people they knew and then leaving because everything else was horrible, Ellie was at least grateful not to spot any more glued food. She even hovered by a delicate metal statue of a daisy bouquet, just admiring the tiny etched details for their own sake long past the point where she’d located the plague and realised she didn’t actually know the artist’s name after all.

But when she finally found it, she knew what she was looking at immediately.

Trig’s face stood out starkly on a canvas, all painted up for a football match and looking smug. The background colours swirled indistinctly, and carried through to the next canvas - where Paul’s figure peered out at her, nervous and fond and familiar with a book in one hand and a taco in the other.

Three strangers followed Paul: a girl who had flowers woven through her hair, and another who looked out from behind a curtain made of star-studded night sky. Her eyeliner was so heavy that Ellie thought she could probably drown in it, and her fingers ached to touch. Another boy, unfamiliar, strummed his guitar as he finished the portrait line-up, and the music that flowed from his fingers turned into thick strokes of paint-

-that carried over to the final canvas, where the ends of those strokes covered up the beginning of a brick wall. Each brick was warm, painted in such careful, tiny details that Ellie had to resist the urge to get up nose-pressingly-close to take it all in, and the bricks were adorned with the words ‘everything ends’ written in sharp, angry slashes of darker paint.

Ellie stared at them for a long time before she finally noticed there was figure in this one as well, standing at the farthest edge.

She had her back to the room. Her face was obscured but Ellie recognised that jacket, and that ponytail pulled back tightly just like she’d worn her hair in highschool. Self-consciously, Ellie raised her hand to touch her hair. Then she forced herself to stop and lower it again as she looked at the people beside her warily from the corners of her eyes, even though her hair was loose and she didn’t even own that jacket anymore.

In the figure’s hand was a spray can. She was halfway through drawing the curve of what Ellie thought was probably the start of a question mark, and before that curve were two words.

_OR NOT_

Frowning, Ellie stared at them, too. When the bustling of the crowd began to die down around her, it didn’t really register. It wasn’t until Ellie heard someone say ‘hey’ right behind her that she remembered the note, and the reason she’d come at all.

Ellie whipped around so fast that she almost stumbled in her haste. Biting back a curse as she righted herself - why, today of all days, did she have to revert to the clumsiest version of herself? - she raised her eyes slowly, nervously.

One corner of Aster’s lower lip was trapped between her teeth as she raised her hand in a half-hearted wave. Ellie found she couldn’t stop looking; her gaze caught on the gleam of Aster’s teeth, the bright pink of her lipstick, and her surprisingly tight jeans.

“Hey,” Aster said again. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

“I got your invitation,” Ellie said nervously. “At least, I assume it was yours. You did ask Paul to send it, right? Oh, god, if you didn’t-”

A smile bloomed across Aster’s face, and Ellie couldn’t help immediately grinning in relief in return.

“Yeah, I asked him to send it. Do you want to get something to eat with me?”

As she gestured towards the door, Ellie abruptly realised that some of the other students were beginning to sweep up and the room was nearly empty. Blushing, she shoved her hands in her pockets and nodded. “I got a little lost,” she offered as an explanation as she followed Aster out.

“In the room? It was pretty crowded,” Aster said with a laugh.

“No, in your work,” Ellie replied unthinkingly, and immediately wished she could kick herself for being so obvious. But Aster looked pleased, and her cheeks turned pink as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I’m glad. I wasn’t sure if- well, it is sort of about you… and a lot of other people, and myself, but- oh! This place has great burgers and it usually isn’t too busy at this time of night, we could eat here,” Aster said in a rush.

Ellie stared after her, mouth hanging open, as Aster hurried into the restaurant. She paused just inside the doorway and glanced back, looking painfully nervous in a way that Ellie couldn’t remember seeing on Aster's face before. It was a look that she was more used to seeing in the mirror.

“If burgers are okay with you?”

“Burgers are great,” she said automatically, before shaking her head to clear it and following Aster up the stairs. “Burgers are fantastic, actually.”

Dinner passed quickly in a blur of excited references and half-answered personal questions, but Aster was just toying with her napkin instead of eating when Ellie finished off her chips with a happy sigh. “I know there’s still one last train you could take, but were you planning to stay a night or two?” she asked as soon as Ellie had swallowed her last bite. “We could keep talking or, I don’t know, get breakfast tomorrow maybe? I mean, if there isn’t anyone you need to get back for-”

Ellie had to swallow hard again around a sudden lump in her throat that definitely wasn’t food. “No! No one right now to- um, but I don’t have anywhere to stay. Or like… clothes."

“Well, my roommate’s already gone back home for break or I’ve got a surprisingly roomy bed- and I could lend you something, if you need it,” Aster said casually, still twisting her napkin before suddenly breaking into a smirk, her eyes twinkling. “Only, I thought you were a Russian doll of clothing.”

Feeling her cheeks heat, Ellie laughed and nodded. “Yup,” she admitted. “It’s still my thing.”

“I like your thing. I miss it, quite a lot actually,” Aster said. Suddenly she dropped the napkin and stretched her hand across the table. “Do you remember that thing you told me about love and Plato and people being split into two halves?”

It was like being thrust into an out of body experience, but somehow even over the rushing of her heartbeat in her ears Ellie heard herself answer. “I thought we'd all resoundingly decided as a collective that love isn’t about finding your perfect half?”

Aster didn’t move her hand. “I tried the searching thing. I didn’t find what I was looking for.”

“So, what, you think you were really looking for me after all?”

“Maybe,” Aster said. Ellie stared at her, but she just looked back in silence until Ellie found the nerve to take her offered hand. “I thought we agreed that I'd be sure in a couple of years.”

“It hasn’t been a couple of years, and _I_ didn’t agree to anything,” Ellie said, the words knee jerk and automatic. “Wait, I didn’t mean-”

But Aster lifted Ellie’s hand to her lips before she could finish. “Maybe I don’t want to wait longer to make my boldest strokes,” she said, as she kissed the back of Ellie’s fingers and then smoothed away the lipstick smudge she’d left there with her thumb.

They sat that way, eyes locked, as the waitress bussed their plates and looked them over, before walking away and leaving them alone without saying a word.

“Yeah,” Ellie eventually croaked. “Yeah, I could stay.”

And Aster’s smile was blinding. Just like she’d remembered.


End file.
